Friday, June 26, 2015

Yeah, as soon as you read how the mother talks to her son about nails sticking up, and bare spots and "boards torn up," you start to think, Oh. And *SHE'S* STILL CLIMBING.

So I can too.

This is the power of poetry.

Hallelujah for poets. (Especially Langston Hughes.)

My friend Lilly shared this video from a poetry slam a few months ago, and it still just gets me.

"You can set the world on fire! All you have to do is BREATHE."

I've been crying on the bus this week. At first I thought it was because I was reading Flora and Ulysses--have you read it? A real tearjerker, but SO WORTH IT. Who thought a squirrel being vacuumed up would turn him into a superhero? I can't believe it took me ALL YEAR to get to reading this book, but it was just the right time, I need the encouragement DiCamillo's words give me, RIGHT NOW.

Work is complicated right now. Let's not go there. Oh, but some guy put our library in his will! So that's joyful and joyful always = uncomplicated.

Uncomplicated thoughts? I would LOVE to go to the beach, or barring that, Sandcastle, tomorrow. (Sandcastle is a water park right outside of the Pittsburgh city limits, and has just enough rides that it's fun, but not too many that you feel like you can't do them all in one afternoon.) I generally go after 3 p.m., to a) miss the harsh sun rays of the midday and b) save some green. I'm all about taking care of my skin and saving money. Or how about making some? My foray into Mary Kay is complicated right now, see above, work is complicated. You don't jump-start your home-based business in the summer if you are a children's librarian.

Hmmm. Morning baths and evening walks. I've been getting more of those in. The ducks at the reservoir are SO CUTE. Right now there are three families with ducklings. The teenagers, the not quite tweens who have mostly lost their fuzzy, and the fuzzy ducklings, our newest group. I hate not having a camera, but going to the AT&T store to get an iPhone 5 just seems...complicated. (Do not judge me.)

The past two days it's been coffee shop coffee and drugstore breakfast sandwiches. Money not well spent. Ah, the commute. (Catching a bus means you gotta get out of the house, pronto.) (As opposed to driving, where one minute later leaving means 1 minute, not 20 minutes off schedule.)

Oh, sorry! I got back to complicated.

Uncomplicated thoughts?

In the middle of writing this, GAY MARRIAGE is now legal in every state in the union. I prefer to only think about the uncomplicated joy that this creates for so many people that I love. (I realize it is not uncomplicated, but the JOY is uncomplicated.)

Cupcakes. Very uncomplicated.

My favorite librarian J has arrived for her Friday shift.

It's Friday and I have two days off in a row! Oh, and I don't have to fast tonight for a blood test tomorrow, because all the Shadyside appointments for my cardiologist got cancelled for next week. JOY!!

This tweet, which today makes me want to cry...

.@rbuurma: "When you use a library catalog, you are collaborating with generations of library catalogers." #rbms15

I need a fun book to take with me when I take myself OUT for lunch = uncomplicated. I've been good almost all week eating in. Yesterday was unplanned. (So it doesn't count?) But I had leftovers for dinner.

See? I can make anything uncomplicated, complicated.

Goldfish. Nope, one died when I was in 2nd grade.

DAMMIT!

Hi, I'm Sarah Louise, and I'm a complicated "think everything over ten more times than it needs to be"-aholic.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

In my new life as a city dweller and city worker (as opposed to my old life as a city dweller and suburban worker) I have noticed a few surprising fringe benefits.

(Not all of the fringe benefits are surprising, since I worked downtown in an earlier life.)

But here's one I didn't expect: I have started running into people I work with on the street, in city neighborhoods besides downtown. Last night, on the way to dinner, I ran into a library clerk that works at our branch, and this morning, on the way to the Busway, I ran into a woman who works at the offices in the East Liberty branch. She was presumably walking to work. It was just fun to see these folks on the street, and just say hi. That glimmer of recognition--you are someone of my tribe--was delightful.

And last night, after dinner, at the bus stop? I met an opera singer from Central Europe. We started talking about European cities we had in common and didn't stop talking until our buses came. These are connections that do not occur when you are sitting in your car in traffic.

Other fringe benefits include more built-in exercise, as running for the bus is now a part of my daily life. Some days I take the neighborhood bus to the Busway, some days I park closer to the Busway and walk. I never take the neighborhood bus all the way downtown, as it takes 45 minutes as opposed to a variable 33 minutes to take the neighborhood bus and the Busway. It's not just the time factor: the buses are old and uncomfortable. I prefer to walk for five minutes, sit for 10 minutes, walk for three, and sit for 10 more minutes. I think once spring comes, I might try walking to the Busway from my house, approximately 2 miles, but I need to purchase better walking shoes first. I am potentially looking at the bike angle. (Although I don't bike or currently own a bike.)

I am purchasing less gas for my car, but since a Zone One bus pass costs $97, I'm not really ahead on commuting costs. Once my bus pass is taken out of my paycheck pre-tax, I will recoup some additional monies, but I'm not sure how much. Every paycheck is a surprise--the first paycheck just had the normal deductions, Social Security, Medicare, City tax, State tax, Federal tax. The second paycheck, I started getting my Flexible Spending monies deducted. The third paycheck, I'll start paying for my health care. I think the fourth paycheck, I'll be starting to pay for my pre-tax bus pass.

Unexpectedly, I miss driving my car. I miss catching up on NPR news, listening to my music, and just driving. This weekend I drove home to see my nephew Max (not his real name) and to celebrate my mother's birthday. Being out on the open road was a thrill. Yes, I was thrilled to be on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, who knew? And last night, driving home from a surprise trip to Wilkinsburg, I got to listen to Jian Ghomeshi, who is one of my favorite radio personalities. Last night he proved he can get out of a hot spot quickly with an interview with singer and British celebrity Boy George. Who would have thought that Boy George is now 52?

***

Reading right now:The Help by Katherine Stockett (umpteenth time); Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins; Calling me Home by Julie Kibler; and The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn. All but the last title are fiction.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Remember him -- before the silver cord is severed,or the golden bowl is broken;before the pitcher is shattered at the spring. (Ecclesiastes 12:6)

I have been putting my Raggedy Ann piggy bank back together. She lost some ceramic orange hair about a month ago when I was trying to get to one of my jewelery boxes. Poor Ann, I broke her before, when I was a girl, and put her back together again, like Humpty Dumpty. I don't have all of the pieces, so the hole in the back of her head is larger than before, and she has a triangle of air in the middle of her cheek. But she still smiles. I haven't used her as a piggy bank for years, but she is someone that has been in my life for a very long time.

The sugar bowl I bought it in Prague when I was 20 has a broken lid. It was to be the sugar bowl for when I got my first apartment. And it was. And it is. Until recently, I didn't have the proper glue in my house, so the broken pieces are all together in one place, waiting for me to glue them back together. The bowl part still holds sugar, and I am fortunate that the only bugs I have to worry about in this apartment are stink bugs and the occasional fruit fly, and neither species cares about dry sugar.

The golden bowl will break. The pitcher will be shattered at the spring. And the silver cord will be severed. (I wonder if the silver cord is our life, I haven't done any research on this verse, but you will find it underlined in just about every Bible I've ever owned.) I find it comforting that the writer of Ecclesiastes knew these things. I wonder if he ever owned a sugar bowl with a broken lid.

***

This morning, I couldn't sleep. I woke up at 4:57 and used the commode, tried to get back to sleep to no avail. I thought, oh, this might be a good time to read the Bible! and pray! (It is Lent, after all, when we are meant to put more energy into prayer...and it's been forever since I've opened a Bible outside of church.) But when you are rusty and out of practice, restlessness takes over again. I'm not used to being quiet anymore. I opened my Bible to Ecclesiastes and read some bits, but I still was too restless. So I came here. I think writing can be a kind of a prayer, so here I am...and I can hardly believe it's been since October that I've posted here, but there you go.

I'm looking at verses in different translations, thanks to Biblegateway.com. The Message is a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson. He has a way with words, he does. Ecclesiastes 5:18 contains this phrase: "what was the point of working for a salary of smoke?" (He's describing a rich man who loses all his money in a bad business deal and has nothing to leave his son. Naked he came[from the womb of his mother], naked he went./So what was the point of working for a salary of smoke?) I love that phrase: a salary of smoke. Part of why I went to bed restless and woke up with numbers in my mind is because last night I finally opened TurboTax and started my taxes. They were a little more complicated this year because I received the fellowship I think I told you about, to study rare children's books. Because I was not a student at the time, that money is perceived as self-employment earnings, and so I had to work on deductions and mileage and such. I was not reimbursed by work for a conference I attended in October. So I had to work on what the deductions were for mileage and travel and meals. My refund is half of what it was last year, and part of that is the fellowship and part of that is that I cashed in quite a few of my Savings Bonds. So it is helpful to read Ecclesiastes in the face of all this. The bowl will be broken. The cord will be severed. The pitcher will be shattered. And yet, the point of life is to enjoy the toil of your hands and then die.

(I never said it was a cheery text.)

The tax refund will pay for most of my tire bill and for my professional memberships. I was hoping that my refund would pay for all of my tire bill plus my professional memberships, but with a smaller refund, I have to divvy up the monies, and I can't put off paying for my professional memberships any longer. (I should have paid for them back in October.) I have a new job, by the way. It is hard work, but mostly satisfying. I'm working as a librarian in a downtown location. The city shouts with beauty and dust, unlike the suburbs which try to make everything decent and tidy. I am faced with the disparities of life--people with more than enough, people with enough, and people with less than enough. These are the people I work beside and these are the people I help each day. I see how important the library is to people who cheerfully ask to borrow the dictionary from the reference desk. Or for young people who have big dreams and nowhere to express them but to borrow foreign films at the library. For the mother with a restless child who wants a copy of The Cat in the Hat. Eventually, I'll be working with children on a daily basis, but since there hasn't been a children's librarian at the downtown location for over a decade, I have to build relationships first. For now, my collection, the books, music, DVDs, these are the welcome mat I extend to the children and parents that walk into the library. It is a collection that someone else created, and that will be mostly replenished by someone else, but I am now its main mama.

I digress. There is so much that can't be put into words. But the point I am trying to express, that I am dancing around, is that my work means I generally sleep at night. It means that I have the energy to work on my taxes on a weeknight, instead sitting in front of the television with my dinner. It means that even though I have no idea at the end of the day if I'm making more or breaking even with this new job, I am happier. And you cannot put a price tag on happiness. That is the point of the book of Ecclesiastes. Dust we were, dust we will be. But if we can find work we enjoy and we can sleep at night, that is good. Selah.* ________________*pause, and think of that.

So, to round it out, I spent 93 minutes sitting in a dark theater. I went to see "Enough Said," which made me laugh and cry and laugh some more. B, don't know if you will like it, as there were awkward moments, but you might. In the theater, we were all shouting at the screen, which is one of the wonderful things about going to the movies with a bunch of strangers in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. ****So...after a weekend at PALA where everything internet was touted as all wonderful and the wave of the future and YOU MUST JOIN, it was refreshing to listen to the following debate show on Q with Jian Ghomeshi. So far, it's 50/50, as to whether the internet makes you smarter or dumber.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

This is fascinating. I knew there were studies saying fiction made you more empathic, and I know avid readers who are jerks, so I was wondering about that.

But this is about innovation. Apparently, in China, they were missing out on innovation. (Really?) And they did a study. Well, I'll let Neil tell it:

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy
convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official
aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time.
What had changed?

It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were
brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But
they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So
they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and
they asked the people there who were inventing the future about
themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction
when they were boys or girls.

Friday, October 11, 2013

This was going to be a comment on Read Roger. There's a study out there about "literary literature" being better for you than "popular fiction." But my comment got too wordy and I lost my nerve. But I'll post it here:

I used to think that reading made you a better person, but I have discovered that it only makes you a more interesting person to other people who read.

When I was a girl, I had a teacher who clucked her teeth that I read lots of Nancy Drew. She thought I should read harder books. But the reading that I did then? Was for escape. To get me out of my life. I actually remember some of the Nancy Drew plots MORE than some of the "literary fiction" that won awards. And I did read other books. I enjoyed BOTH Nancy Drew and Newbery Award Winning books. When I was a children's librarian, I always told parents, (especially the ones who thought Junior should be reading Anna Karenina at age 8), "Children read two levels below their reading level for recreational reading. And you WANT them to read recreationally, because it's the only way they will stay readers for the rest of their lives."

Of course I love this idea, as a librarian. But it makes *a lot* of sense. More disasters will come. A personal story: when a power outage wiped out a lot of houses near the Barnes & Noble where I worked in Virginia, the bookstore was teeming with people coming in from the cold. This was before wifi was something people even knew about. But we had chairs, coffee, and books, and our heat was working.

From the article: "The New York Review of Books, apropos the closing of neighborhood libraries in London, libraries are 'the only thing left on the high street that doesn’t want either your soul or your wallet.'"

****

Thinking of other "power" readers as I plow
through a book I never thought I'd consider reading after the disaster
that was Eat Pray Love: Elizabeth Gilbert's novel is GOOD. Maybe she
should stick to fiction? LAF, Babelbabe, are you/have
you read it? I'm halfway through. Of course, my father and I could
discuss it b/c he'd read the book review. (My father is like the
character Tom in the movie "Metropolitan," who only reads book reviews.)

The title is forgettable though. I had to just google it to get the link, below:

Oooh, but this link describes her research, which is what I'm interested in. And b/c I can't shut up about a book that could still disappoint me b/c I'm only halfway through, I'd like to point out that Eliz Gilbert has been publishing for 20 years!! So when she was "given" the book proposal money to go do Eat Pray Love, people in publishing knew she had the chops. If you haven't read EPL, I recommend ONLY reading the Italian part (Eat) b/c it really is lovely. (Which is why I hated the book in the end, b/c the Pray and Love parts were hideous, in my humble humble opinion.)

Who's that girl?

I'm a work in progress librarian. I love books, Jesus, and apple strudel. I've traveled the world only to discover that I adore Pittsburgh, PA. I attempt most days to work out my life with fear and trembling. I write about books, shoes, Carrie Bradshaw, and an occasional post about the Psalms. I also have a dark side, so watch out!
Sarah Louise is a pseudonym, so the names may have been changed to protect the innocent...